He stares at the headline and tries to tell himself they are only letters. Bold, black letters on cheap paper.
Death in film studio! Betty Winter struck dead by spotlight!
They are only letters.
Letters are not reality.
Just a day later and he’d know they were lying. Death would no longer be able to claim her, not anymore, because she’d already be immortal.
He lets the paper drop. The smell of fresh coffee drifts towards him, suddenly seeming less real than the letters in the paper, than what the letters in the paper are telling him; it intensifies the feeling of impotence, an impotence he hasn’t felt for years.
She has been wrested from him.
‘Would Master like anything else?’
Albert is standing there, just as he has always stood there, even in those grim, chill years he would sooner erase from his life.
Albert is always there, has always been there. Every day, every single one.
The day the world…
On the day the world withdraws from his life, Albert stands at the window, closing the room’s heavy velvet green curtains. It is growing dark, only the dim gaslight remains, and the concerned faces, the stern faces, that look at him as if they mean to pin him down with their gaze, pin him down forever in this room.
They have caught him.
In the larder.
What were they thinking? What did they expect from a fifteen-year-old boy tormented by hunger and reduced to skin and bones in one of the city’s wealthiest homes – whose kitchen alone employs six staff? Whose larder can compete with those of the most expensive restaurants?
He’s been at it for weeks. He knew when the kitchen would be empty and the coast would be clear. Stomach rumbling, he would stand in front of all the delicacies and pick tentatively at things he wasn’t allowed to eat.
At sweet things.
It doesn’t matter how much he eats, he won’t get fat, that’s the way it’s been ever since he’s been afflicted by this disease.
And yet they realised.
Father realised and laid a devious trap for his son.
The shame of standing in the larder under their gaze, mouth smeared red, the bottle of juice in his hand. If only they were reproachful, but they are merely disappointed.
He’s just a child, Richard, Mother says. She has tears in her eyes.
We have to protect him from himself, Father says. Otherwise he’ll never grow up.
The servants are silent.
Albert closes the heavy door, the key turns loudly in the lock, and it is done. His imprisonment has begun; the world is now on the outside.
True, they still let him out, but only under supervision, two minders constantly at his side. No, he can’t accept that.
He bows to his fate.
Accepts that he can no longer have friends.
No longer find love in this world.
Fifteen years in which a dark curtain settles over everything.
Don’t let it! Create your own reality!
Free from pain, free from hunger, free from disease.
‘Would Master like anything else?’
Albert is the only constant in his life, the only enduring presence. He shakes his head and the old servant leaves the room in silence.
He folds the paper, as he always does.
For a brief moment, he would like to be another person, in another world, like on those long evenings in front of the screen; but reality won’t allow it, not this time.
Perhaps it is just a dream? But who decides what is dream, what reality?
The pain bores its way into his heart, dream or reality, for a long time it has made no difference.
Betty Winter struck dead by spotlight.
And then, in big letters, he sees that one word, framed by a question mark.
Sabotage?
His pain transforms into rage, into rage that knows no bounds. He reaches for the carefully folded newspaper and tears it, rips it into smaller and smaller pieces that swirl around him like oversized snowflakes.
Who has done this to him?
Who?
He loved her, damn it!